Early Warning Systems (EWSs) aggregate multiple sources of data to provide timely information to stakeholders about students in need of academic support. There is an increasing need to incorporate relevant data about student behaviors into the algorithms underlying EWSs to improve predictors of students' success or failure. Many EWSs currently…

This longitudinal study examines factors that explain differences in levels of state appropriations for higher education across states, sectors, and institutions between 1984 and 2004. The study sheds light on the complex relationship between institutional mission, state fiscal health, and state political context in explaining appropriations for…

In this brief, authors Suzanne Graham and Lauren Provost examine whether attending a school in a rural, urban, or suburban community is related to children's mathematics achievement in kindergarten, and whether increases in mathematics achievement between kindergarten and eighth grade differ for children in rural, urban, and suburban schools. They…

This brief examines the complex interplay of family, school, and place factors in the reading achievement levels of third grade students. Third grade reading achievement is critical to later academic and occupational success. Using data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, the authors report that suburban children realize greater gains in…

Defining population diversity as the distribution along a continuum of homogeneity to heterogeneity with respect to one or more variables, measures are described with variance-based interpretations which can be applied to qualitative data. It is possible to use these statistics to define relationships in multivariate distributions. (Author/CTM)

This report focuses on the education and work experiences of rural youth during the emerging adult years (age 20 to 24), as they make the transition from adolescence to adulthood. It documents how rural emerging adults combine work and school and experience idleness, closely examines their educational attainment, and compares their experiences…

The uses of data on siblings for educational and psychological research purposes are explained. Examples are based on empirical data. Five types of research problems, using sibling data, are explored: (1) statistical control of family background variance in psychological or educational studies which use analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) or multiple…